


press zero to hear more options

by ciaconnaa



Series: press zero to speak to a long lost relative [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Gen, Self-Harm, a character in distress accidentally harms themselves a lil, a post kidnapping of morgan stark, but yeah this is a sequel, that's a cautionary tag, where she has spidey powers now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23422375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ciaconnaa/pseuds/ciaconnaa
Summary: After being missing for four months in a secret underground lab, Peter and Morgan are finally back home, and are more alike than she could have ever imagined. And sure, ever since Morgan was little, she wanted to grow up to be a superhero just like Iron Man or Spider-Man. She had her heart set on it. But she doesn't exactly feel elated when Peter tells her she can lift upwards of thirty tons.She's terrified.or;Morgan has Spidey powers AU
Relationships: Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: press zero to speak to a long lost relative [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684891
Comments: 74
Kudos: 550





	press zero to hear more options

**Author's Note:**

> you guys wanted more in this universe so!!! here you go!!! read the first blurb for more details!

“It’s not blue.”

Peter only appeases her comment with a half-hearted hum, his eyes focused on the holographic triptych displaying all of Morgan’s lab results. Her father is leaning over his shoulder, his glasses lit in a way that has her know he’s looking at _more_ screens, likely comparing her Cool Superhero Stats to Peter’s Cool Superhero Stats.

From atop her seat on a workbench, Morgan stares at the vials of blood Cho had taken hours before. Dark red and very boringly human-looking.

Her gaze lingers before she picks up her 6th pair of glasses and works on punching out the prescription lenses. “I was kind of hoping for blue,” she yammers on. “I don’t know much about spiders, _but_ horseshoe crabs, they’re arthropods and _they_ have blue blood. It’s from the hemocyanin. The copper, it makes it blue. It’s also got healing powers. Well, like, not really. But the FDA is able to use it for something. Or is it used? I dunno. It's for endotoxin identification. It was a very long article, I only skimmed it, but, I digress -” She pauses as the lens pops out and clatters to the floor. “It would be super cool if those qualities manifested into some sort of healing ability.”

That finally gets Peter’s attention. He looks up, almost knocking his shoulder into her dad’s nose and smirks. “Like waterbending?”

“Exactly!” Morgan declares with a snap of her fingers. “Like waterbending. Or I guess bloodbending, if you want to get a little more literal. I could heal all your Spider-Man bumps and bruises, Pete.”

“With your _blood?”_

“Magic blood. I think. I’m confused on the hypothetical details.”

The smirk falls away into a genuine grin before his nose wrinkles and he laughs softly, turning back to the monitors. “Well that sounds awfully _vampiric._ I’m quite glad your blood is red.”

She scoffs, popping out the other lens. “You’re no fun.”

Her dad looks at her with a weary look that doesn’t hold the same exasperation it once had. Morgan enjoyed the Before Times when she let her unfiltered mouth run until her father gave her that Look that begged the question of why and how she turned out to be such an annoying little shit. 

Now, he’s too traumatized and relieved that she’s not actually dead to give her too much grief. Which, fair. She’s glad her dad is happier and less stressed and sleeping at night again. But she still misses the Before Times. When she wasn’t a mutant whose shadow suddenly filled Peter Parker’s perfectly.

She puts the empty frames on and gives her dad a toothy smile in hopes of giving a picture of what was.

Tony chuckles before he taps his own glasses, the screens turning off. He comes over and holds her face in his calloused palms, rubbing his thumbs over her cheekbones before he gives her nose a tweak, and the bottom of her frames a flick. “You can just tell everyone you got contacts, honey.”

Morgan tries not to frown. “Yeah, but.” She shrugs helplessly. “I like my glasses. I always have.” She gestures to the collection her father has helped her build over the last ten years or so that she’s worn them. “I want to find a way to wear them even if I still don’t need them.”

Her dad sighs, softly, and reaches up to brush her hair out of her face in habit - but it’s not there, hasn’t been there for months. She and Peter are sporting matching looks, with uneven buzz cuts they both haven’t bothered to fix it.

Her dad looks a little sad on her behalf that her hair is gone, but Morgan doesn’t care one way or another. Which is why she has no no problem offering up the suggestion, “I can wear a wig.”

“As much as I _do_ miss that rat’s nest you called hair,” Tony quips, “No wig needed. You look beautiful, hair or not.”

Morgan rolls her eyes. “I don’t care about looking _pretty._ I care about looking _cool.”_ Her eyes blow with an idea. “Blue wig. Bright blue. With pigtails. In the shape of _pincers!”_ she gasps, moving her hands to either side of her head, hands mimicking a crab. She tilts her head past Tony, staring at her blood samples, as if that’ll do anything.

“Still red, Morgan.”

She pouts. “Are you _sure?_ Not a dash of blue? I’ll accept purple.”

“Nope. In fact.” Peter moves, flipping the holograms so that Morgan can read the results, side by side with Peter’s. “I’ve looked through the data and you and I are basically the same person now.”

“Ew.”

It falls on deaf ears as FRIDAY highlights the bigger similarities from the mess of data. “If we did a strength test, I’d imagine it would be about the same. The same goes for speed, agility -”

“How much _can_ you lift?”

Peter blinks. “Oh. Uh. I don’t actually know my _limit._ But I can lift cars? Uh, Jet bridge. Did that once. Several tons of concrete…”

“Oh, just give me a rough estimate.”

He does some light speed calculation. “30 tons without hurting myself.”

“That’s…” Morgan looks down at her hands, trying to wrap her head around how she _herself_ could achieve something that sounds like a myth. “...like, five elephants. At once.”

“Only five?” Peter’s face scrunches into something...amusing. “Huh. Well, yeah. I guess.”

“You’re not impressed with five?”

He shrugs. “You fight as much weird shit as I do and five elephants feels tame.”

Her heart constricts and her stomach feels like it starts to climb up her throat - a stroke of panic. So far it’s been a scratching of the surface concerning her new abilities: lab tests, scans, observations. The thought of having to put them to _use_ -

Morgan isn’t sure she wants to be lifting five elephants worth of evil to save New York.

She furrows her brow for too long or her cheeks lose their color, because her dad gives a soothing noise before he pulls her head to rest against his chest so she can hear his heartbeat. “It’s okay, peanut.” He tells her, kissing her softly on the top of her head. “I know it’s overwhelming. We’re gonna figure everything out. But there’s no rush. Why don’t you go upstairs and take a nap?”

She whines a little. “I already took a nap today.”

He laughs. “No harm in taking another. You’ve been through a lot.”

“So has Peter, and you aren’t telling _him_ to take a nap.”

She pulls her head up and gives her dad a shaky smile. He reaches out and adjusts her glasses once more before he takes them off and adds them to the pile. “I’ll work on fixing all your glasses while you sleep. Go on.”

Morgan sighs but obliges, jumping off the workbench when Tony steps away. She heads for the door, listening to Peter already mumble about the next test under his breath, but stops short of actually leaving. “Um. Peter?”

He answers without looking up. “Yeah?”

“You -” she pauses, frustrated with her anxiety. “...You’re still staying here tonight, right?”

There must be something in her voice. He looks up, concerned, and swipes all the holograms away with one flick of his wrist. “Yeah, kiddo. I’m not gonna go anywhere. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

She nods, but can’t find herself to walk up the stairs. 

Peter holds eye contact until it clicks and his sigh makes her feel five years old all over again. It’s a pity sigh. She’s not fond of those. “Maybe I should take that nap, too,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out, not even pretending to go along with Peter’s excuse for her. “I’m really sorry -”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Tony tells her, but he looks hurt. Months without her dad, and as ecstatic as she is to be home, it’s _Peter_ she can’t seem to stand leaving her sight.

Trauma sure is a picky bitch.

“Come on,” he smiles as he walks over, scrubbing his hand over the fuzz on top of her head. “I’ll even let you put on Jeopardy until we fall asleep.”

“What is: Crippling PTSD.”

Peter rolls his eyes, but he’s fighting a smile, and it’s a small victory. They end up camping out on one of the big couches, perfect for napping, and Morgan puts the fluffiest pillow in Peter’s lap and rests her head there. She has no hair for him to run his hands through, but he still scratches at her head like a puppy, and she’s asleep before the categories are even announced.

* * *

Since Morgan’s been home, she hasn’t woken one time without being completely nauseated. 

The nightmares don’t rip screams from her throat, don’t make her toss and turn or talk in her sleep. She’s always trapped in them, a prisoner. They feel like they go on for hours, and maybe they do, and there’s no way for her to wake up until they're over, no matter how much she tries.

This time is no different. 

She almost throws up, but doesn’t. It’s a weird feeling because as sick as she feels, her new metabolism is making her stomach gurgle with hunger - she’s _starving._ She turns her head and sees Peter still scrunched up in his place as a human pillow, snoring softly. There’s a blanket wrapped around them and a sticky note from Pepper telling her she loves her taped to the coffee table. The one from Tony is stuck on Peter’s forehead.

She only manages to lay there for two minutes before her stomach makes noises so loud, it could wake up the entire city. She slips away with Peter with ease (the whole agility thing) and makes it to the kitchen where she goes straight for the freezer. Tony told her he got his hands on her favorite ice cream flavor despite it being out of season: Peppermint Chocolate Chip.

Morgan grabs a spoon and rips open the container -

-only to immediately discover that the ice cream is rancid.

“I know what you're thinking. But it’s not rancid.”

Morgan heard Peter walk into the kitchen when she got the spoon. But she was hoping she could give herself brain freeze before they had to talk. Instead she’s actually _gagging_ as she puts the lid back on, sliding the ice cream across the counter. “It’s definitely rancid. Smell it.”

Peter’s grimacing as he picks it up, but he doesn’t open it. She notices the sticky note is still on his forehead. “It’s not rancid. It’s the peppermint.”

“The peppermint?”

Peter shrugs, setting it back down and sliding it towards her. “Ever since I got bit I haven’t been able to _stand_ peppermint. The smell is -” he shudders. “Don’t like it. Honestly, anything minty is kinda _blegh._ Spearmint is _doable,_ which is how I assume you’ve been brushing your teeth, but I eventually gave up and bought special toothpaste years ago.”

Morgan had noticed that brushing her teeth wasn’t very fun, but she had attributed it to her new sensitivity and not the mint flavor. She looks forlornly at the pint of ice cream and tries to will the scratchy hot feeling that itches down the back of her throat. “The peppermint thing, that’s...it won’t go away?” 

Her voice cracks on the last word, and part of Peter’s expression breaks as well.

“No," he tells her. "I don’t think it will.”

“This is my _favorite_ flavor.”

“I know, Morgan. I’m sorry.”

It’s a stupid thing, but it’s the last straw in what has been a week of stresses and disappointments. Morgan starts to cry pitiful tears, full of hiccups. She throws the ice cream against the counter before she sinks to the kitchen floor, gripping her head. She suddenly misses her hair, needing something to grip onto. Instead, her nails sink into the side of her scalp, too roughly, that she draws blood.

It’s not a lot, not in her opinion, but it’s enough to freak Peter out. “No, no, no,” he whispers quickly, running over to sit beside her. He grabs her hands off her head and holds them in his own. “Don’t do that, you’ll hurt yourself.”

“It's too much,” she sobs. “I can hear three dogs barking a mile away. I don't need my glasses anymore. I can’t even eat my favorite _ice cream!”_

She continues crying and Peter lets her, scooping her legs up in his lap and gently guiding her head to rest on his shoulder. He starts rocking her back and forth. “It’s not easy. I know it isn’t. But I’ve done this all before. I can teach you what to look out for, I know how to adjust -”

“Peter,” she says, forcing herself to choke back her cries. She leans her head up and looks at him, seeing him completely even in the dark. “I don’t want to be _you.”_

He smiles, albeit shaky. When he goes to smooth what’s left of her hair, his thumb brushes up traces of her blood instead. 

Still red. Still human. 

“Morgan,” he finally tells her. “You don’t have to be.”

But she knows her destiny has always been intertwined with something bigger than herself, despite her father’s constant assurances that she can walk away from fame and fortune, whenever she wants. She just thought it would be hero _adjacent,_ somewhere down the line.

She didn’t know the strength of five elephants would ever be on her shoulders.

The sticky note on his forehead finally falls off and flutters in her lap.

 _Everything will be okay,_ it reads. _Love, Dad_

“With great power comes great responsibility,” she whispers back. “You - and Dad - you guys taught me that. If I don’t step up to the plate, people will get hurt -”

Peter grips her hands _tight._ He’s shaking. “You _don’t_ have to be like me.”

It’s a lie that tastes worse than the peppermint ice cream.

Because they _both_ know that she will be.

**Author's Note:**

> hello!!! I hope you guys are staying safe and are taking care of yourself and your loved ones! I wish you all the best always! as I'm posting this, remember that visitor hit counts are no longer being counted by unlogged users due to the new massive influx of people reading fic during this time, so authors are going to need lots of love to know you guys are out there reading!!! leave a comment on the fics you read if you can, please! make sure to give the love right back! 
> 
> mwah! <3
> 
> ps: I think that if I write more one-shots in this universe, I will attach it to this fic, so the chapters will all be loosely related in the same universe. That isn't a promise, and you'll obviously know if that changes, but that's what I have planned for now! So just a heads up


End file.
